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Hawaii waging campaign for Obama library

Hawaii officials say Obama's connections to the state are just as important as his ties to Chicago. | AP Photo

News of the committee came to light when Charles Lipson, a political science professor at the university, went public with his opposition to a potential library and museum on campus. He voiced his concerns to the Chicago Sun-Times, saying that such an institution could violate a school mandate prohibiting university ties to political or partisan initiatives. The committee will also consider the issues Lipson raised, according to Stone.

Obama, whose campaign headquarters is based in the Windy City, served on the University of Chicago Law School’s faculty for more than a decade. Many of his friends, former colleagues and ex-administration officials have high-level ties to the university — including Susan Sher, who served as chief of staff to First Lady Michelle Obama, and Austan Goolsbee, who was chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. Stone, who has served as dean of the law school and provost of the university, is an ally of the president’s as well.

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First Lady Michelle Obama also held leadership roles at both the university — she once served as the associate dean of student services, among other positions — and at the University of Chicago Medical Center’s Community Affairs division.

But more than four thousand miles away, government and university officials in Hawaii think their state’s connections to the president are just as important. After all, Obama was born in Honolulu, his parents met at the state university and he attended the prestigious Punahou School there.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment and University of Chicago spokesman Jeremy Manier echoed Stone, calling talk of a presidential library bid “premature.”

Susan Donius, the director of the Office of Presidential Libraries at the National Archives, said fights over housing the presidential libraries are often fierce.

“Having a presidential library in a community is a wonderful thing,” Donius said. “…It brings in tourism and wonderful public programming opportunities, so obviously there’s always going to be intense competition to get a library into a community.”

That competition is nothing new: former President Ronald Reagan, for example, could have housed his library at “a whole host of sites in California,” including Stanford and Pepperdine universities, though Reagan eventually chose a large piece of land in Simi Valley, said John Heubusch, executive director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation.

When former President Jimmy Carter was exploring options for his library, he was wooed by institutions including the University of Georgia and Mercer University before settling on a partnership with Emory University in Atlanta, said Steven Hochman, the director of research at the Carter Center, a nonprofit institution affiliated with the presidential library and with the university.

Interesting- I guess Hawaii has some empty storage sheds that need to be filled. Besides the lack of sufficient records to be of any consequence will the continuous hype and blame be written up to fill the rest? A library for Barry - are they really serious- they would have to stock it with talking teleprompters to get any words into history. Th e papers he may have are all buried by executive order or in the mob files in Chicago- sealed in cement in some construction site- never to be revealed. A continuous comedy routine started when this fool first came on scene and has continued forever. It will be refreshing to have it all come to an end.

Obozo's Library ? To put just what in it ? All of his records from his 5th grade report card to his college records and everything in between is sealed ! His records of good things he has done in his entire life including his time in the Senate and as POTUS . Are either in Jimmy Hoffa's pants pocket or are in the exact same spot the " Golden Fleece " is located at. Because nobody else has seen them. Obozo's records of failures and the amount of debt he has put the citizens of the USA ( many of whom haven't even been born yet ) in would fill up every freight train boxcar in the USA and Canada and Mexico !

A Vietnam Veteran: " Obozo's Library ? To put just what in it ? ".......................Couple of half burned joints, an eight ball of coke, a straw hat, and a copy of "Dreams". Oh, and a bunch of stuff stolen from the White House when he leaves this coming January.

Kenya has a monument to Barry's birthplace already - why not put the library on that site?

Obama records? When he lived in Hawaii his name was Barry Soetero, as it was in Jakarta when he was a muslim in order to gain admittance to the muslim school there. If the records are all taken to Hawaii, will the sealed records go as well? Hawaii can't find the original birth certificate, so will a forgery be set up alongside the Connecticut social security number which belonged to a dead person a long time ago?

Sheriff’s investigators tracked down the registrar who allegedly signed the White House’s birth document, U.K. Lee, who is now 95. She provided information that posed further inconsistencies with the story of Obama’s birth at the Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital in 1961.